quotations about thought
A man has a right to think lots of things he has no right to say.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
A great thought is best dressed in the simplest language.
CHARLES NORDHOFF
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ideas are the seeds of thought, but they do not produce flowers unless the soil where they are sown is fertile.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Maid in Waiting
Thought as such ... is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Negative Dialectics
Whether thoughts and ideas manifest in a material outcome depends on our transmission of them into perceived reality.
LY DE ANGELES
Tarot Theory and Practice
I am full of thoughts,
A thousand wheels toss my uncertain fears,
There is a storm in my hot boiling brains,
Which rises without wind. A horrid one.
THOMAS DEKKER
The Noble Spanish Soldier
I don't believe in thought. Too much thinking.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
Thought is the parent. If error has crept in among the little thoughts, and the children have become disobedient and refractory, it is not the parent's fault. Nor must you blame the children either; they are young yet, and you must not expect too much of them.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
When thoughts cannot find vent and utterance in action, the mind ceases to think. It will not continue to produce its mighty births of power and beauty, to see them fall dead-born into the world, or to be strangled in embryo.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Ah, the mighty men who conquer,
And the men whose words we drink,
Are the men who quit the jangle,
Quit the turmoil and the wrangle
Of the world, and turn their faces
To secluded, silent places,
Where in solitude they think.
EDGAR GUEST
"Think"
A thought embodied and embraced in fit words walks the earth a living being.
E. P. WHIPPLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thought exists at the farthest remove from the vocalizations of the human animal.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Alas! we make a ladder of our thoughts, where angels step, but sleep ourselves at the foot; our high resolve look down upon our slumbering acts.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
The Venetian Bracelet: The Lost Pleiad
From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, August 1, 1786
A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
radio broadcast, "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", October 16, 1938
The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death.
C. J. CHERRYH
Chanur's Legacy